I experienced some personal affect regarding my removal from the institutional frame I have grown so accustomed to. But remain extremely excited by the possibilites this inherantly exhibits and my prospects within this freedom. As such I have prepared several pieces of work to engage myself with, including an audio/visual art installation, a live audio/visual collaborative performance, sound design on a short film, the production of a music video & website as well as various live visual events.

Foremost, within the initial weeks following I plan to draw up an artists manifesto detailing my influences, impressions, and expectations of my artistic experience thus far before explaining my current position within my artisitc framework, intentions, motives and views for the future. Taking into account various other forms of manifesto, most notably taking cues from the 2010 manifesto of virtual arts published by the Australian centre for visual art (ACVA). I believe that the manifesto practice will help my work a great deal in both the focus and overall intention of outcome within the visual, musical & abstract format of work; remaining reflexive and progressing through these is paramount to the continuation and evolution of the personal creative process.

A direct involvement and possible benefactor of this practice is the live A/V collaborative performance with Jake Horgan in June as Lizard Quest. Our work together has seen various incarnations over the past 4 years and as a result we have become fairly adept at communicating creative ideas within a project. The Lizard Quest moniker was borne of our mutual love of abstract ‘post-digital’ idealism in music and video games (The name was even chosen because it connotes a ‘retro-video-game’ coupled with the bizarre, internet-based, paranoid conspiracy theories surrounding lizards & David Icke) and this is communicated through our choice and use of samples as well as the appropiation of visual imagery associated with that era in sub-culture(1990-2010). Our workflow consists of passing back & forth save files in various Digital-Audio-Workstations (DAWs) such as Audacity, Ableton & Reason as well as various other smaller formats & media which we send to each other in order to closely inform our working process (including recorded skype/phone-calls, youtube/vimeo videos, articles on projection-mapping etc). Our work together and especially my personal work is informed by the film-making practice, specifically the process of sound design & recording. Through my work recording foley I have garnered an extensive knowledge and sound-bank of the recording of vocals, instrumentation, Spot FX and field recordings, which we implement widely within our work. Our use of field recordings is of specific interest, as it is a direct use of environmental artefacts to produce rhythm, creating a form of aleatoric music. Aleatory occurs within the manipulation of incidental sonic events, e.g. the sound of lighting hitting a tree & subsequent thunder. This control over seemingly random environmental events induces a concurrent incongruent listening experience over the audience and induces a kind of decousmatic listening effect, wherein a listener is not made

aware of or is unfamiliar with a group of sounds, so will instinctively listen harder (this occurs mostly within environmental listening as opposed to musical listening), directly inducing an active listening experience. Further sonic effects we have employed within our production that have come as a result of my experience within Sound-design include the use of infra-sound to induce a ‘feeling of uneasiness’ or ‘supernaturality’ within a listener. This effect is common when the frequency (pitch or tone) of a sound falls below the range of human hearing (which is 20hz-200khz, this effect occus specifically around 13-16hz), but is being amplified at such a volume that it can still be ‘felt’ through our sense of touch (Which I utilised in the production of Abel, a short film revolving around a vicars loss of faith in religion).

Moreover, our efforts as Lizard Quest aren’t limited to the constraints of music, as we endeavour to move beyond a passive or even active musical experience, through the audiences indirect/direct & involuntary involvement. Through the use of projection techniques such as Video-feedback, coupled with a variety of software used to detect facial expressions (FaceOSC) which can be assigned to specific values within a sound; it is possible to construct and experiment using an audiences reactions to create or manipulate a whole sequence or single element of a musical piece. Moreover, through encorporating our immediate environment and appropiating it for manipulation we approach a loss of control of the process and move towards more generative forms of creation.

We are currently working on such a process to inform our work within a ‘music video’ framework. Producing an original 5-10 minute feature solely created with

a single piece of ‘found’ (recorded) sound, manipulated and effected wholly with the process of bio-feedback to alter various elements of the video/sound output of the piece. Creating not just music-with-a-video, but an amalgamation of visual sound events, which perfectly mirror and interact with each other. This visual element came from my personal experience with live-production & editing of high-quality visuals for music events and

parties.

We intend to use all of these creative methods to manipulate the audiences expectations of our performances and production and move toward an idea of musical performance as experiential, direct & participational.

In addition to this, there are also a number of live events which I use to hone these visual practices, most commonly various video-feedback methods. involving a webcam attached just above the projector, it is possible to create other-worldly textures using any surface available (left). However, often any surface available is the only surface available. While each event typically may last around 6-8 hours, the predominance is spent subtley altering the video effects in time with the music in creative & unfamiliar manners. I used this practice to inform my installation in

2014 with Synaesthesia 1&2 (right). Where I created an audio/video feedback loop utilising the interactive video aspect to change the pitch of the sound generated. I use this method of video feedback to communicate the inherantly symbiotic aspects of the phenomenal experience known as ‘Synaethesia’, wherein two or more senses are merged. The overall arching thematic ‘moods’ of my work typically revolve around provoking & recreating these experiences, in the context of artistic deconstruction i.e. confronting how we relate to, interact with ultimately are effected by our sonic environment. In future projects, achieving further realisation of this notion will not only garner further

understanding of my own perception but provide a platform to work within while

not constraining myself to a single format. This is also being explored within my current project Ideasthesia, which relates a specific colours pallettes to musical tones, through bio-feedback methods of interaction and manipulation. Constructed as a pair of screens positioned at a 90 degree angle, each screen displaying a random ‘event’ or clip which corresponds to a colour, instrument & pitch. Moreover, moving beyond pure art installation, it is my intention to form a hybrid installation/performance art, such as the use of the EEG-MIDI headset.

A useful method of gaining a strong audience is maintaining a steady online presence. I intend to publish and purchase a domain name for the purpose of distributing both promotionl material and original compositions, visually & musically, either in a blog format or on a website. I have constructed a demo of what I believe to be an appropiate version of a website needed to publish these works.

While simple in it’s construction it includes everything relavent to the public exhibition of my work and information regarding this. I believe a website can be

an important tool in developing an online presence as it allows people an entire platform for them to send to friends and operate under specific ‘opinion-leader’ methods of distributing social media. While this website is merely a demonstration of what is available given time, it is already online at “donteatsushi.wix.com/zaron” and eventually I intend to purchase a domain name in order to gain a higher level of credibility. In addition to this I have already printed off business cards of similar designs to that of my website in order to achieve a thematic

and memorable impression upon a viewer.

The imagery I have chosen is for it’s complimentary aesthetic and analogies to the aforementioned abstract digital idealism, which dictates any digital experiences as real and human experiences as similar as any other. Constructing motifs in order to portray a memorable and thought-out approach

to working within any format is another essential element to maintaining a useful and constructive social media presence. I feel this is important specifically to this field of work (events) as this platform is where the predominance of advertising is effectively reaching it’s audience. Having a presence within each of these provides a useful platform towards an

audience that’s not readily available within other forms of promotion.

This affords me the opportunity to host a number of different interests with the knowledge that it has the potential to attract a global audience despite it’s relative anonymity, and the variety of information and media on the website contributes to the broad nature of the audience, compounded by my ability for aboslute freedom of what content to publish.Further beyond this is the potential to market, produce & foster an audience within an online community based around specific artists & their works. An area

which I am looking forward to entering, and of which there are already considerable achievements.

A project which has the potential for this will be the result of my current project, Ideasthesia, which will utilise EEG technology to portray a synaesthetic experience. My intention for the conclusion of the project is to have an in-depth understanding of how to communicate effectively through the use of EEG-MIDI technology, allowing specific brain-waves to control sequences of clips & accompanying music. This will allow me to conceive of several different manners in which to communicate ideas regarding the phenomenon and additional movements in the availability of bio-data sonification technology will propound this. I hope in the future this will be regarded as a significant point within a shift of technology, within the combined use with Oculus Rift, for example, which also has similar analogies to bio-data amplification. A public exhibition of such technology should hope to provide a useful platform for discussion regarding it’s use and applications within this field. Hopefully such a demonstration would provoke ideas with our use of bio-feedback related technology to provide a platform for interpretation, in a non-novelty manner, to support it as a useful tool instead of a toy.

A continuation upon this method of expression would eventually see the need for funding in it’s growing scale. A method for this I recently & extensively investigated was within the Arts Council Englands funding opportunities, (Although, I was eventually able to circumvent this procedure) applying for grants with a minimum of £1,000, with minimum expenses relating to equipment, costs/rental/transport, and those which provided a position in which audience members could in some way be involved (and thus benefitted the community in some way), and given ample time (6-14 weeks) stood a surprisingly good chance of having some sort of involvment with the funding. Following an understanding of the technology available to me and the potential for it’s use I intend to develop this further by advancing upon my practices and forming entirely new connections between the technology and our ability to control it. From my initial interpretation of the software and it’s construction it seems necessary to build some software specificially for each use, in Max/Msp, or through PureData.

It could be said that it is fruitful to master a single medium or form of media, be it fine art, film or music. However, I find this approach to be reductionist in design, allowing the constraints of one format removes possibilites and restricts truly creative concepts purely on the basis of form alone. So from this persective it would be holistic to achieve an understanding of various forms of production, to gain a true comprehension of how they interact and their flaws and positives therein.

Whilst productivity is of prime importance, quality is beyond this, & ensuring that works when considering such abstract concepts, remain applicable and constructive can also provide a challenge.